Discover the Science of Health
It’s spring, pollen is everywhere, and for many people, it’s allergy season. However, there’s one thing that’s missing this year: the over-the-counter (OTC) allergy medicine Benadryl. It’s just another of the many products recalled by Johnson & Johnson over the past year-and-a-half. The list of over 40 pulled products is a who’s who of common OTC medications: Tylenol, Benadryl, Motrin, Rolaids, St. Joseph and Sudafed.
Exposure to secondhand smoke, such as a person can get by riding in an enclosed car while someone else smokes, has a direct, measurable impact on the brain — and the effect is similar to what happens in the brain of the person doing the smoking. In fact, exposure to this secondhand smoke evokes cravings among smokers, according to a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The study, published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, used positron emission tomography (PET) to demonstrate that one hour of secondhand smoke in an enclosed space results in enough nicotine reaching the brain to bind receptors that are normally targeted by direct exposure to tobacco smoke [1]. This happens in the brain of both smokers and non-smokers.
Today more than ever, science is playing a pivotal role in food and cooking as the worlds of the laboratory and the kitchen come closter together. A perfect example of this in today’s culture is the Food Network show Good Eats with Alton Brown along with websites like the Science of Cooking, Molecular Recipies, Modernist Cuisine and the Molecular Gastronomy Network.
The result of this movement to bring science into the kitchen is Molecular Gastronomy, the application of biological and chemical knowledge to cooking. Molecular Gastronomy is a discipline practiced by both scientists and food professionals to study the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking.
World Asthma Day is an annual event organized by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA). The event raises awareness about asthma and works to improve asthma care around the world. This year’s theme is “You Can Control Your Asthma”. It aims to continue the focus on asthma control described in the latest version of the GINA guidelines [1].
Genetic variation has been though to be responsible for the differences between people to metabolize certain drugs. The results of a recent study from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden suggest that it may be even more complicated. Swedish reserchers have found that the body’s ability to break down medicines may be closely related to sunlight exposure and vitamin D, and thus may vary with the seasons. The study, published in the journal Drug Metabolism & Disposition, offers a completely new model to explain individual differences in the effects of drugs [1].
